


Take what you can get

by Eva



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-06
Updated: 2013-06-06
Packaged: 2017-12-14 02:56:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/831898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eva/pseuds/Eva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leorio and Kurapika reach an understanding.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take what you can get

**Author's Note:**

> Ancient HxH dug up from my long-dead LJ.

People were not different. Leorio had made a meandering path across a continent, learning from herbalists and bonesetters--Nen users all, whether they knew it or not--and people were the same, everywhere. It was their circumstances that were different, and that included everything from climate to ailments to customs.

And so he accepted the basket of roots with grace, admiring the sheer amount since he didn’t know what else about roots there was to admire, and promised to bring the basket around tomorrow when he checked on little Eskwone, whose foot was going to be fine. And when he could shut the door, and wait a full thirty seconds to be sure that he was in the clear, he whispered, “Roots.”

Were they edible?

They looked like lumpy maggots carved from turnips.

Some appeared to be stained with blood. But that was probably just red clay.

Probably.

“You look confused,” Kurapika said, and politely didn’t comment when Leorio swore and dumped the basket onto the floor. “You aren’t familiar with the, ah, those?”

He was standing in the small, arched entry to the kitchen, which Leorio still smacked his head into in the mornings on the way to make tea. Food, that was another thing that was different, and Leorio hadn’t known there were a people who could survive on water and red tea alone.

“I’ve been here a week,” he said sourly, shuddering as he handled the dry, knobby plants. “I’m living on cactus and the occasional snake.”

“Sounds lovely,” Kurapika said after a pause.

Leorio straightened up, basket restored. “You, um, you want some tea?”

...

He waved Kurapika to the table and put the kettle on. Kurapika, naturally, continued to stand and stared out the one tiny window. A gecko ran up the wall and disappeared into a crack in the low ceiling.

It was Leorio’s job--as host, as the guy who’d been in the Laxia Desert longer than a couple of hours, and simply as Leorio, the one who wanted some kind of relationship and who had demanded friendship at the very least--to get the conversation rolling. He knew that. But he couldn’t bring himself to care. The air was dry and the sun beat down like a hammer and he couldn’t reconcile it with nights so cold his breath steamed, and held him in a state of exhausted fascination for hours. 

The kettle began to whine, and he swung it to another burner as he went to grab the mugs.

“Do you--” Kurapika’s voice was loud, stilted. “Do you still--”

His heart beat so hard that it hurt. “Do I still what?”

Leorio hadn’t fought anything but illness--and maybe homesickness or loneliness, things he did not so much as give thought to--for a year. But his instincts were screaming, every sense focused on Kurapika’s slightest movement as if he were expecting a knife through his back at any moment.

Kurapika’s breath was warm and wet on the back of his neck. “Do you still want to...?”

Yes. More than anything. All words he couldn’t seem to push past the lump in his throat.

Kurapika pulled him around gently and let his hands rest on Leorio’s abdomen. His bangs hung low, shadowing his eyes. “I don’t want to let you.”

Somehow, Leorio found his voice. “Let me what?”

“Want me.”

Kurapika stated it flatly, matter-of-factly, as if the subject hadn’t been danced around for months by both them, leading to the most convoluted and confused confession ever given on Leorio’s part. Kurapika had said nothing, had simply gone.

“That’s not up to you,” Leorio said hoarsely.

“I could make it up to me,” Kurapika said, again so flatly, so honestly, that Leorio struggled against his own instinct to believe him. Kurapika’s nails, not long but still strong, still sharp, bit into his skin through the heat-wilted fabric of his shirt. “I could make you--”

He didn’t say what.

If he had had the words, Leorio would have said that everything didn’t have to be such a damned tragedy, that revenge didn’t have to poison every single damned thing in Kurapika’s life, that some things could be separate and remain separate and damn it, damn it, Leorio didn’t have to be his everything, just something. Something that wasn’t tortured, wasn’t tragic.

“You couldn’t do that and still be you, so.” Leorio swallowed hard, and managed a grin that he didn’t feel. “Whatever way you look at it. I win.”

Now Kurapika looked at him, and his eyes were rimmed with red--just tiredness. Just dry, bone-deep exhaustion. Leorio knew the feeling. “You win, do you?”

“What do you need?” Leorio whispered. “From me. To trust me.”

He’d lied, but so had Kurapika. They knew when the other was lying. They knew how deep their friendship ran, and how much deeper it could go. If Kurapika would let it.

Kurapika’s hands were on his wrists now, gentle, but no less strong for that. “Everything.”

And that wasn’t fair, because Kurapika wouldn’t give him that. But they could compromise. Leorio swallowed again. “Everything I haven’t already promised away.”

Kurapika was leaning close now, his eyes half-closed, lips parted on the words. “I’ll hold you to it.”

It held the edge of a warning, but it was more than Leorio had dared dream he would get, and he would take it. He pressed his mouth to Kurapika’s in a slow, hot kiss, triumph and gratitude sizzling up his spine, heady and sweet.


End file.
